by Jeff Woleslagle on Oct 17, 2008
Welcome to the 937th Edition of Loading...
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The Pulse
First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse.
World of Warcraft- 200 BPM Warhammer Online - 98 BPM Age of Conan - 34 BPM Stargate Worlds - 16 BPM Tabula Rasa - 12 BPM EVE Online - 11 BPM Lord of the Rings Online - 11 BPM EverQuest 2 - 8 BPM Atlantica Online - 8 BPM Dungeon Runners - 7 BPMIf the Top 10 isn't enough, we also show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)
Daily Column
Loading... MMOG news and entertainment on overload.
Today is the day I'm sure all of you are waiting for. And by "all of you," I mean "next to none of you."
Max Payne is now live in theatres, hoping for its place in the annals among such painfully memorable video game-to-movie adaptations as Street Fighter, Doom, and the silver screen's reigning king of game-infused pain, Super Mario Brothers. The trailer hints at a heavily supernatural plot, but nothing like my "slash and burn the zombies tripping out violently on a nasty hallucinogenic drug and their mafia pusher overlords" memories of the game. Max Payne and Max Payne 2 were fun games, and the gameplay was about as cinematographic as I needed or wanted from the IP (Intellectual Property - a fancy way of saying everything an established story concept does or could reasonably entail), and if a movie must be made, the game IP was plenty interesting, creepy, and certainly linear enough on its own two legs.
Speaking of IPs, Ten Ton Hammer's Medeor ferreted out an interesting bit of news from a Carbine Studios job listing. The Orange County, California studio is apparently working with an "established IP." Among established IPs that are both popular enough to have mass appeal and have can support entire worlds without seeming like disingenuously bold-faced profit generators?
The two undeveloped MMO IPs that everyone mentions, Pokemon and Harry Potter, don't interest me or I'd wager most of the core MMORPG demographic - the after college but before kids crowd - in the slightest. Star Trek is spoken for and (if the rumors hold true), so is Star Wars in a big way. In the high fantasy genre, I'd definitely like to see an Elder Scrolls MMORPG - no game screams for an online adaptation more than Oblivion - but I'm fairly sure that Bathesda would hold on to that golden goose of a license, and likewise Fallout. Thinking about it a little, if Bethsoft could just pull off a major MMO success, we could have another Blizzard on our hands.
As for Carbine, I'm clueless, but for publisher NCSoft's sake, I hope it's a big one. The official website has a fantasy bent and that would fit with the few employees we know of that are working there, notably fantasy author Jess Lebow (formerly of Flying Lab Software and Pirates of the Burning Sea).
What new fantasy IP (or any IP) would you like to see developed into an MMORPG? Post your thoughts in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you like. Have a great weekend!
Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day8 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 188 in October! 2688 in 2008!
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]
BlizzCon 2008
[New!] Wrath of the Lich King Screenshots [New!] World of Warcraft PvP Panel [New!] World of Warcraft UI Panel from a Player's PerspectiveImages/Video
Wizard101: Halloween VideoOp/Eds
World of Warcraft: How Players Trade Time for RewardsCommunity
Age of Conan: Border Kingdom Cryer - The Culture of ArmorGuides
Warhammer Online: Public Quest Maps - Talabecland Lord of the Rings Online: Book 13 Walkthrough - Doom of the Last KingHot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:
World of Warcraft PvP Panel World of Warcraft UI Panel from a Player's Perspective World of Warcraft: How Players Trade Time for Rewards A Player's Opinion of the WoW Raid Panel Curt Schilling on Azeroth Advisor Exclusive Video - Diablo 3 Questions World of Warcraft: Classes Panel Boomjack's BlizzCon Impressions World of LineCraftReal World News
Police should turn blind eye to public sexThanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer Team